Why reproduction matters
This is the one characteristic in the chapter that an individual can live without — but if it is not done, its species disappears.
If every organism died without propagating its kind, what would become of life on earth? Each population would be gone from the world for good within a lifetime. So before one generation dies, that generation must produce another.
Reproduction
The process by which a unicellular or a multicellular organism produces a new generation for the continued existence of its kind is called reproduction.
The odd one out of the eight
If nutrition, respiration or excretion stops, the organism dies. If reproduction stops, nothing happens to the organism — what is lost is the species. Reproduction is therefore for the survival of the kind, not of the individual.
Which is what makes reproduction interesting: it is the only living characteristic a virus shows — as the last section of this chapter explains.